Summary
WHEN SHE MADE HER 1998 FILM Romance, Catherine Breillat imagined she had directed a sensual movie. The story was not traditionally romantic. It concerned a girl who didn't love herself and set out to find a sexual identity. Breillat is an intellectual film-maker, so there was bound to be some grit in the mix, but still, the director was "devastated" when she saw the finished result. She felt it was "a punishment".
Romance made headlines for providing mainstream cinema with its first erect penis. The film, whose cast included Italian porn star, Rocco Siffredi, was banned in several countries; here, though, it was one of the first non-porn films to benefit from the relaxation of the rules concerning the depiction of sex. Now, with an 18 certificate, almost anything goes.See the full content of this document
Extract
What's Love Got to Do with It?
But if Romance was a punishment, Breillat's latest film is torture. It unfolds as a kind of pornographic dream. An alienated woman (Amira Casar) pays a gay man (Siffredi, again at full mast) to observe her body, which repulses him. Having fixed his gaze, she then pays him to take advantage of her in a number of symbolic ways, the most notable of which occurs while she is sleepin...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
